


in-between the trees

by SaltyLoaf



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cryptids, Alternate Universe - No Pennywise (IT), Bill Denbrough & Eddie Kaspbrak Are Best Friends, Cryptid Ben, Cryptid Bev, Cryptid Mike, Cryptid Richie, Cryptid Stan, Cryptozoologist Bill, Cryptozoologist Eddie, F/M, Halloween, Losers Club (IT) Friendship, M/M, Minor Horror Elements, YOU WILL FIGURE IT OUT, Young Adult Losers Club (IT), a bit creepy, a bit spooky, because, bill and eds are great friends because i said so, i do not condone fucking birds, i do not have much of a plan but we will get there, i mean they are lil monster friends, i ship tagged it so i could get views get fuckin pranked, its not actually set on halloween but im posting it on halloween so it fits, no explicit romance, no i will not say which cryptids, not beta read we die like men, patty doesn't have a major role really but she will be present, reddie are soulmates but not quite, richie uses he/they pronouns because i said so, some are mythology actually but dont worry about it xoxo, they are bad at their job, they have a spiritual connection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:29:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27309949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaltyLoaf/pseuds/SaltyLoaf
Summary: Eddie and Bill are enthusiasts of the strange and unusual, Amateur Cryptozoologists (as they call themselves) who would very much like to make a career out of their passion. After years and years of failure, Eddie finally discovers somewhere with a striking lack of scientific research: Derry, Maine. Forums remark the place as a breeding ground for creatures and creepy crawlies of all shapes and sizes, but the residents were always deemed crazy and left to their one means: until now. Eddie and Bill are willing to give it a shot for a chance at the job of their dreams and are willing to do anything to get their scoop. Will the creatures living in the shadows and forests of Derry welcome them with open arms? Or will the creatures of the night find a reason to keep the boys out of Derry for good,,,aka, i really fucking love cryptids guys, the losers are cryptids, that's it that's the concept
Relationships: Bill Denbrough & Eddie Kaspbrak, Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon, Eddie Kaspbrak & Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak & The Losers Club, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Mike Hanlon & Richie Tozier, Richie Tozier & Stanley Uris
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	in-between the trees

It was mid-October when Eddie and Bill set out from their grimey joint New York apartment to the quaint hills of Eastern Maine, but it felt like an eternity until they finally got there. Even though it was only about an 8 hour drive, Bill had insisted that they make pit stops to explore the area (as if they hadn't lived in "the area" their whole lives). The amount of hokie roadside attractions they found themselves stopping at was borderline infuriating, there were only SO many times Eddie could see the "Largest Rubber-band Ball in the World" before he started realizing that NONE of them were. But,,, Eddie knew he couldn't say no to Bill. He never could. Bill figured that out a long time ago and took advantage of it whenever he could: making Eddie go red in the face from anger was one of his favorite pastimes after all. They had been a duo for longer than either of them could remember, so they both knew just one more giant rubber-band ball wouldn't break their own elastic bond. 

"Billy I will throttle you on the side of the road if we don't get to this place soon. My hands will be around your throat and then you'll finally have an excuse to why you haven't finished your damn book." 

"We'll be there s-soon. Probably. Did the map say before or after Ridge Road?" Bill glanced at his mirror, "because we just passed by Ridge Road." 

Eddie slid down in his seat and let out a long, pained groan, "We have been driving in circles for HOURS. That is the forth time I have seen that exact rock formation and I KNOW it's the same rocks because it had a funny lookin' moss patch on it which was only funny because I had been looking at it for the FIRST TIME."

"L-listen man, you picked the trip. I said I wanted to go to Oregon and investigate the origin mythology behind Gravity Falls but you wanted to see a s-sasquatch. Who is at fault here?" Eddie huffed a breath from his nose. "Plus, they have sasquatches in Oregon! They aren't even popular here! I mean sure we might see one but it's a lot less likely than say, I don't know, " he looked coyly at Eddie through the rear-view, "Oregon? A place with known sightings?" 

"You are going to make me pop a blood vessel,” Eddie half-heartedly threatened, gesticulating and chopping his arms in the air wildly. “And plus, you know I didn't just want to come up here for sasquatches! The forums I was looking at specifically said Derry was a meeting place for creatures from all over the states! Do you know how long we've been looking for something like that? Hell Billy, you might even find your hot werewolf boyfriend you used to journal about-" Bill elbowed him in the chest and Eddie huffed out a laugh, lightly shoving him back. "I'm serious! This could be our big break into cryptozoology! No more shitty blog for you and no more volunteer Boy Scout leader for me. We could finally move out of our shit hole and get recognized for something we're happy doing! You can't tell me you're happy working at ripoff Starbucks." 

Bill's cloudy eyes brightened up a little bit as he looked out on the open road. "I think you know that answer better than anyone. But you don't gotta slam Sam's Café and Brewery like that, we occasionally make good beer." 

"You say that like you literally know anything about beer." 

"How do you know I don't?" 

"You don't." 

"I don't." 

They drove in comfortable silence for a while longer, the quiet hum of local radio stations buzzing through the speakers. The leaves on the trees were just beginning to turn to their various shades of yellow, red and brown, forming beautiful patterns of autumnal goodness across the skyline. The sun was setting over the horizon, casting a delicious shadow over the entirety of the forest. The wind swirled the leaf piles in gentle, uncalculated circles just above the ground, obscuring the view of the terrain nearer to the edges of the run-down road. The sky looked bluish-grey, not quite like it was about to rain just yet, but more as if a few stray rumbles of thunder might appear soon to usher folks back into their homes. Something was on the horizon, but Eddie couldn’t think of just what. 

Suddenly, their truck started to slow. Eddie looked over at Bill’s face and found the same look of confusion that he knew he had. “Billy, why’d you take your foot off the gas? We should be nearly there by now.”

Bill furrowed his eyebrows, “D-dude, my foot is flooring it. I dunno know what the issue is.” Eddie peered his head outside the car, checking for mud or gravel that would be slowing them down. Nothing. The road was completely clear, almost eerily so: there were barely even any leaves on the asphalt. He turned his attention towards the gauges, looking for a blinking light telling him their coolant or something or other was busted. He quickly found the issue.

“Dude, we’re out of gas. I thought we filled up, like, an hour ago, what the hell?” The truck slowed to a stop, the only lights illuminating their way now being the soft glow of the full moon, their interior, and the bright headlights shooting their beams out into the darkness of night. Eddie checked the gauge again, tapping it with his fingernail to a resounding click click in the quiet of their truck. Still empty. They exchanged a look of uneasiness as they wordlessly stared out into the headlight beams. 

“Maybe it was b-bad gas? That exists right?” 

“But our gauge showed it was full earlier, and we’ve been running on this gas for the last hour just fine. If the gas was somehow bad we would’ve known long before we just randomly stopped in the middle of the road.” But the more he thought about it, the less it made sense. Why else would they have just suddenly run out of gas? Nothing else seemed to be wrong with the truck and the battery was clearly still working so,,,

“I’m gonna go check under the hood. Maybe we’ve got a leak or something.”

Eddie wordlessly opened his door and slid out onto the asphalt, trying not to think about the strange lack of foliage crunching under his feet. ‘I’m sure it’s just the speed of the vehicles passing through.’ Leaves continued to flutter outside of the bounds of the road as Eddie walked towards the front, popping open the hood to the truck with the speed of familiarity. He prided himself on being pretty well versed with cars and how to work 'em’, but this time his expertise gave him more questions than answers. There was absolutely nothing wrong with their car. Hell, their engine and mechanisms still looked in tip-top shape from when Eddie spruced them up for the trip. He kneeled down and looked underneath the bed and found the same thing: nothing. A sigh left Eddie’s mouth as he stood back up, swiping off the dust and dirt from the old road: he best call a mechanic he supposed. 

But when we stood back up to his full height, he froze. 

Bill was looking straight forward, his eyes saucers. Eddie studied him through the glass and could see he was vaguely shaking, eyes fixed upon the space just behind where he was standing. Eddie took a deep breath, watching the warm air from his chest form a small cloud in front of him as he exhaled. He could do this. He’s traveled all over the country looking for the terrifying and unusual. He could do this. He slowly turned around, squinting his eyes against the blinding shine of his headlights. Ahead of him was a,,, well.

He wasn’t really sure what it was. 

Ahead of him stood a creature he had never seen before, not even in his research of the area. It’s head was humanoid, smooth-looking curly black hair rounding off at the bottom of its ears. But that’s where the normalcy stopped. It’s ears were pointed at the ends like an animal’s and at the top of it’s head there were two smallish horns poking out of the curls. It’s torso was mostly human except for an excessive amount of body hair, and it was wearing an ugly looking mustard yellow hawaiian shirt to top off the uncanniness. It’s legs were the most unsettling part of all. From the torso down, it had goat legs, the ends of them being adorned with hooves and (again) vast amounts of hair. As Eddie scanned up and down the creature’s body, he found a folded up pair of thick, bottle cap glasses lying up in it’s shirt pocket. 

Eddie was like a deer in headlights. He couldn’t tell if he was about to scream, cry, or laugh at how ridiculous this all looked. Sure he was an expert in the strange and unusual, but this was going a little too far. Maybe that gas station had drugged them in their tea. That must’ve been it. 

But what he couldn’t deny was that, where the goat man had stepped across the country road, suddenly leaves started to fall. Where previously a sort of invisible wall had been preventing them from laying there, the goat man’s presence seemed to give them permission. The beams of the headlights reflected off the goat man’s eyes, making them shine big and bright as they stared back at him. Waiting. Eddie didn’t know what to say. They stared at each other for a while, unmoving, neither of them willing to make a sound. The goat man seemed awfully calm, like this was something it was familiar with. After a good minute, it looked down at its wrist as if checking the time (there was no watch) before turning back to face Eddie. It winked.

Eddie flustered for a reason he couldn’t explain, causing him to stumble back a little bit from his stance. By the time he looked back up, the goat man had started walking again and was nearly off the road, leaving a trail of colorful fallen leaves in their wake. For another unknown reason, Eddie almost found it in himself to miss the gaze. He thought about calling out to the goat man before they got too far, but he instead climbed back into the truck, closing the door behind him. He looked over at Bill and exchanged a look of passive confusion. Even though that underlying prickly feeling was still there, Eddie felt strangely,,, comfortable in the goat man’s presence. Like he had no real reason to be afraid. He tried to give that energy to Bill in his gaze, but the gawking look on his face told him that he wasn’t doing a very good job of it. 

Eddie decided to try breaking the silence. “So I guess we should really call that mechanic, huh?” he mused, reaching his hand across the seat divider to turn the key for emphasis. Much to their surprise, just as he turned it, the engine began to roar in its familiar, battered kind of way. He looked back towards the gas gauge in bewilderment, finding it to read the same as it had before they reached the cursed road: full. Eddie gulped and clapped his hands, rubbing them together dramatically. He turned to Bill with a smile of fake reassurance, trying to keep down his anxious bile a little longer for his sake.

“Want me to drive?”

\--

It didn’t take them too much longer to get back to their hotel room, but the drive certainly seemed never ending. Bill had barely said a word since they left, and even the words he did manage to spit out were so littered with stutters that Eddie could barely understand a word of it. Eddie couldn’t stop thinking about the man he saw, how their aura seemed to have even nature itself bending to their will. He couldn't help but think that, despite everything he saw,,, if the man had asked him to follow them, he would have listened. He was scared to see where that train of thought would take him. He looked out at the full moon through the window of his hotel room, her shining back down at him with a sneer. She knew what he was getting into, but she would never tell. He had the window open, preferring to listen to the crickets instead of the eerie silence of his room. It was calming.

The streets beyond the small building he was staying in were mostly deserted, something to be expected of such a small town. The streetlights down below flickered with the wind, leaves blowing this way and that around each of the posts rhythmically. Eddie wondered if the leaves bent to the man’s will, or if they were simply close friends. Maybe he’d have a chance to ask them if he stayed here long enough. There was a huge shadow approaching from behind the building, engulfing the entirety of the area around the hotel lot. Based on the weather earlier it was probably clouds. A huge gust of wind suddenly swept across the front area of the lot, knocking over a trash can and sending the leaves into a wild fury. An extremely loud rumble of thunder erupted from the sky immediately afterwards, causing Eddie to jump nearly straight out of his chair. When he looked back out the window, he swore he could see a large black feather floating down into the lot, but when he blinked, it was gone. 

Maybe he shouldn’t be alone right now. 

Eddie stood up from his seat, not being able to take his eyes off the window for long enough to effectively walk away without tripping. He wouldn’t call himself paranoid, but he was definitely not relaxed. There were definitely more strange things about this town than he had thought. He couldn’t help but long for his inhaler, picturing it back at home in their bathroom cupboard: he had insisted that he wouldn’t need it. Maybe he still didn’t. He gulped deeply, picturing the goat man in the forest despite his best efforts. He thought about their little horns and hawaiian shirt that matched nothing else about them. He thought about their eyes and how they looked in the reflection of the headlights. He could breathe again. Yet another thing he was not really to unpack today. 

He slipped into his slippers and adjusted the buttons on his pajama shirt, fidgeting with them as he walked past his neatly made bed and to the exit. He blinked and was in front of Bill’s door, knocking on it lightly in the pattern he always used when they were back home: three quick knocks, a pause, and then two more. It was familiar, comfortable. Billy opened the door almost immediately, his face showing a similar look of uneasiness to his own. Looks like they had the same idea. Eddie didn’t say a word, just brushed past Bill’s lanky frame in the doorway and laid down on the bed, collapsing onto it facefirst like dead weight. It took about a minute for Bill to join him, Eddie exhaling when he could feel Bill’s hand lay comfortingly on his upper back. Acknowledgement. Comfort. He didn’t know how long they laid there, Eddie face down and Billy face up. 

Bill was the first one to break the silence. “Y-you don’t wanna leave, do y-you?” Eddie twisted himself on the mattress to face Bill, his face no longer crinkled at the edges. 

“No, I think we should stay. We wanted a challenge, didn’t we?” Eddie’s eyes shimmered slightly in the dim light of the hotel’s bargain-bin lamp.

“Yeah,” he took a deep breath and exhaled, watching his breath dissolve in front of him in the chilly room. “I guess we did.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading chapter one!! I'm hoping to use nanowrimo this year to write more of this fic, but I will make no promises!! I have never been a man of a consistent schedule, and this fic is completely self-indulgent, so I'm not gonna force myself to write when I'm miserable. I'm also very busy with school most of the time,,, but I'll definitely try and make room for you guys in my schedule!!
> 
> if anyone has any specific questions about the mythology of the characters or about where the story is headed, either leave a comment or dm me on my twitter @saltyloaf! I'm pretty much always active over there, so I'll try and get back to you as soon as I can <3


End file.
